


Starlight

by HopeForTheWitch



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Addiction, Crack Treated Seriously, Creature Fic, Dementors, Don't Examine This Too Closely, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, MoD!Harry, Religious Content, Vampires, hindi, plot holes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-17 01:27:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29833923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HopeForTheWitch/pseuds/HopeForTheWitch
Summary: On his twenty-first birthday, Harry’s mysteriously transported to Fort Azkaban, where he’s promptly welcomed home by two oddly behaving dementors. Apparently being the Master of Death means Harry is the ruler of the sovereign state of Azkaban and all that entails. As Harry learns more about what it means to be a dementor, he also learns about the issues that split their population in two: an age-old matter of ethics. Where one side is happy enough to feed on just emotions, leaving the soul behind, the other side goes the traditional way. But which side is right?Inspired by all the "Harry inherits way too many things"-fics.
Relationships: Harry Potter & Original Character(s), Sirius Black & Harry Potter
Comments: 21
Kudos: 27





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Duender](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duender/gifts).



> If you've read Open Doors and you're wondering about the title... this fic came first and the title is very fitting lol. I refuse to change it XD
> 
> I have a lot of thoughts about this fic. I have a very rough outline of what's going to happen, and I plan to stick to it, though things may change as I finetune it. I don't think the first chapter will undergo any changes, however, which is why I decided to post this anyway. I only have CH1 and CH2 fully written, CH3 is halfway done and CH4 and CH5 are fully outlined, but I can't promise I'll stick to an update schedule, sorry. If that means you'd rather wait with reading, then by all means.
> 
> This fic will have a lot of Hindi words because I wanted to give the fic the feeling that dementors are speaking their own language. They aren't _actually_ speaking Hindi, I'm just using the language to denote dementor-speak. The first chapter is purely introduction, so that will only start happening in the second chapter. I couldn't have done this without Duender's support! 💖

The week leading up to Harry’s twenty-first birthday is marked by suicides.

Three, in fact.

Each is treated as a victim until proven otherwise, and Harry thanks his lucky stars that he has the week off and isn’t part of the teams sent to the possible crime scene. The youngest is no older than fourteen, a boy who was about to enter his fourth year at Hogwarts. The other two were well into adulthood when they passed.

None of the families saw it coming.

Harry knows this because Ron’s sitting at his kitchen table with a beer, wiping at his forehead and then his cheek as he recounts what happened. On the tabletop rests a newspaper, but none of the suicides appeared in the news because the Daily Prophet is smart enough to recognise that the last thing they want is giving vulnerable people _ideas_.

“That’s rough, mate,” Harry says uselessly, shoving another opened beer bottle Ron’s way.

“Tell me about it.” Ron heaves a sigh. “‘Mione’s up in arms about it, says it can’t be a coincidence, says statistics argue that the darker months are more likely to—” He falls silent and takes a swig of his beer. “Well, whatever, just be glad you didn’t have to go.”

“Oh, trust me,” Harry says, “I am.” He is. 

He’d feel guilty for the fact that the auror department likes to keep him on sensationalist cases, the ones they can leak to the Daily Prophet to repair trust in the ministry, but he doesn’t feel guilty because at least the cases he’s on are clear-cut and flashy and don’t tend to have grieving families attached to them. The ministry would never put him on something that even _hints_ at the possibility of suicide.

Ron isn’t so lucky.

* * *

Two days after Ron’s visit, the cases are ruled suicides after all and the investigations are closed. The family of the boy don’t agree with this verdict because according to them the so-called suicide came out of the blue, but evidence suggests no foul play. They refuse to leave the auror station in Diagon Alley, but the ministry isn’t above playing dirty.

Harry, who despite his fame is still a rookie and has no say in these things, is sent in to placate them. Chagrined, because it’s his birthday of all days and honestly this feels a lot like cheating, he goes in and does as told. He offers them a listening ear and does his best to soothe their frustrations, but he can tell it’s not working as well as the ministry would like.

That’s not Harry’s problem, however.

* * *

Harry’s twenty-first birthday party comes to a rude stop when the sole attendant loses consciousness at midnight. It’s a good thing he’s already in bed, he thinks afterward, eyes half-lidded and locked onto a series of small holes in the ceiling. He has work the next morning and the ministry wasn’t really happy with his performance today, he can’t afford—

His chest hurts and against his will, his eyes fall closed with sudden exhaustion. 

He feels like he’s floating and then he’s in free-fall and his vision goes black.

* * *

He dreams he stands in some kind of train station. It’s not a new dream, though the appearance of the station differs every time. This one happens to look similar to the one he visited when he was seventeen, yet he doesn’t recognise it as King’s Cross. 

As usual, his mother is waiting for him. He has dreamt of her before as well though she doesn’t always appear. She smiles at him and holds her hand out. He takes it and they walk around the place in silence.

They end their walk in a large hall, empty except for them, with ceiling-high windows and floor-length curtains. The first one closes ever so slowly as Harry watches, then the second one, then the third, gaining speed. 

His mother looks panicked. “I don’t have much time,” she says mournfully. 

She pulls him down to her level and then she whispers into his ear, but the words turn into meaningless air as soon as she speaks them, the curtains closing faster and faster until the hall has turned dark.

With her secrets still ringing in his ears, the landscape changes.

* * *

The land around him is dead and the ground is sandy underneath his bare feet. 

Harry wiggles his toes, notices that all he’s wearing seems to be some silky robe that’s fallen open and is flowing softly on a breeze he himself can’t feel. Everything around him is blackened and rotted in some way. Not all trees around the clearing are completely dead yet, but they’re getting there slowly but surely.

A raised path runs through the clearing from north to west, indicated by intrinsically carved borders. When Harry squints at them, some of them turn into letters, but they’re degraded with age, enough so that he can’t make out what the lettering says. He steps on the crooked bricks, grimacing at the way they feel beneath his bare feet; he prefers the sand.

A large structure looms out from behind the trees in the west, an imposing wall in the midst of this desert in the middle of nowhere. The dead forest isn’t as deep as it seemed to Harry earlier, though it’s hard to see very far, and soon he finds himself in front of metres upon metres of concrete. Even the wall feels grainy when he touches it, and he leaves his hand up as he starts walking the length of it. From the distance it hadn’t looked like he was caged in, so there must be a way around the tall building somehow.

As he walks, he wonders why the path was a dead end. Why bother with it, if there wasn’t anything other than a wall at the end of it? Surely there should’ve been something of an opening in the wall, but there was nothing. Or perhaps he just hadn’t seen it? 

Perhaps, he thinks with sudden clarity, it’s like Platform 9¾. 

But he’s been walking in a dream-like state for Merlin knows how long and the end _still_ isn’t in sight; he doesn’t feel up to turning around, walking that entire distance again and checking to make sure.

Not long after he has his epiphany, however, he reaches a set of steps and a heavy looking door with bolts running from top to bottom on one side. His fingertips only just touch the hot stone before it swings outward with force. Harry has to jump out of the way or risk getting smacked in the face. 

With nowhere else to go, he goes inside. 

The door behind him falls closed with a loud creaking noise as if the thick stone slab was made of wood, and then it’s dark. Harry’s breath hitches, but he doesn’t have much time to dwell upon the darkness because suddenly a torch lights up the narrow corridor from behind him, casting eerie shadows on the floor and the bare concrete walls. He turns around to check the door but behind him is only an arched opening leading into a darkened room, as if that’s where he came from rather than from outside. Odd. To the side is another opening, this one leading to a dimly lit area.

One by one the torches on the walls come to life. 

A little spooked, Harry enters the lit area, finding what looks to be a dusty drawing room, the light coming from the large fireplace, clearly the centrepiece of the room. Whatever this place is, it doesn’t seem very well cared for by whoever owns it. Two worn sofas flank a square coffee table whereupon a vase with withered sunflowers and roses sits in the middle, the furniture on top of a dirty carpet. Harry grimaces at the sight and in the back of his mind Aunt Petunia is screeching at the state of negligence.

A second after glancing around the room, the implications of a lit fireplace hit him; someone’s around.

Harry stills and listens carefully but he can’t hear anything of note. Maybe he should call out? Then again, isn’t that what gets people killed in films? He can’t just stand here and hope for the best either. What to do, what to do? While he stands in dubio, a shadow falls upon him.

He whirls around and his heart jumps into his throat at the sudden sight of a dementor of all things. He waits for the fear to hit, the bad memories to surface, but nothing happens beyond his own panic, no external forces exacerbating an emotional meltdown. The dementor may as well not be there at all.

And then the dementor bows deeply at the waist. 

“Welcome home, my Lord,” it rumbles at him.

Harry faints.

* * *

He’s aware of voices, but can’t make out words. The sounds are harsher and colder than what he’s used to and he doesn’t understand them. Slowly the sounds turn into words, strung together at first and then separated neatly into sizeable chunks that he’s able to form into sentences that make no sense at all before they start to resemble things he recognises. But the language weighs heavy on his tongue, almost a dead weight, and when his mouth tries to shape sounds into words, he finds himself unable to.

“...going to kill us when he wakes,” the first voice says roughly.

“We’re already dead,” the second voice says slowly.

A shaky, rattling breath echoes through the room. “Then we’ll be deader.” 

“More dead,” the second voice corrects.

“More dead,” Harry repeats, but the words don’t feel right, and he frowns. His eyes fly open with realisation.

That’s _not_ English.

Also, dementors.

Plural, the first joined by a second one that’s a little taller, both standing ramrod straight next to the armrest of the sofa Harry’s laying down on. He swallows thickly, wondering how on earth he’s going to get away from them and then he wonders how he still has his soul. Perhaps he doesn’t and he’s just not aware of it, much like an enchanted portrait isn’t aware of its own limitations.

“My Lord is awake,” the second dementor says.

“Obviously,” the shorter one mutters.

“Is this real?” Harry hears himself ask in English, managing to sound exactly as bewildered as he feels. He sits up and tries to wrap his mind around the fact that he was whisked away on his twenty-first birthday to an unknown but deserted place, then was dumb enough to enter what looked like a never-ending wall, and now there are two dementors standing within arm distance without trying to attack him one way or another, calling him _my Lord_ , and Harry—

“Tea, my Lord?”

Harry has a fucking headache.

* * *

It takes a while for his hysterical giggles to stop, but when they finally do, Harry wipes away tears from his cheeks. He rubs his forehead afterward, headache worsened by his uncontrollable laughter. Between the two of them over the course of the next hour, the dementors explain what’s going on. They truly _are_ dementors, easily unleashing their terrifying powers for five long seconds when Harry voices his doubt. 

“Enough, please!” he calls out desperately, shivering violently in the sudden cold, screams in his ears and blood dripping from his hands. They immediately stop, pulling their power back into themselves so forcefully that Harry feels as though the room is freeze-dried, just for a moment, and then there is silence.

Harry sits in that quiet, lets it fester while he mulls over the truth. 

_Their_ truth, for he hasn’t decided yet whether he’s going to allow it to become _his_ truth too, hasn’t decided yet whether he’s going to let them warp his reality into something he doesn’t recognise.

Their truth goes like this: “You’re in Fort Azkaban,” the short one said solemnly, “the gateway between the Beyond and life as you know it. The fort belongs to the Master of Death, which means it belongs to my Lord now.” The two creatures had looked at each other through their hoods, then the taller one said, “We haven’t had an emperor in 349 years, my Lord.”

Fort Azkaban, its earth entrance square in the middle of the dementor village that’s tucked away deep in the forest of Welldesn on the island of Azkaban. The prison is west of the island, built on the coast not long after humans first discovered the presence of dementors, about a kilometre away from the treeline. Humans don’t dare enter Welldesn, apparently _everyone knows_ that’s dementor territory, something that was specified in the treaty from 355 years ago.

None of it makes any sense. Most of it goes in one ear and out the other, not purposely so, but it’s too much for Harry to handle all at once. He has a hard time reconciling this new information with what he already knows of the creatures, because his own truth goes very differently.

After all, _everyone knows_ dementors are very dark, mindless, creatures. They eat at your happy memories until there aren’t any left, their Kisses leave your body without a soul, and they hate Patroni. Hell, Harry fought two of them off in the summer before his fifth school year, never-mind all the ones he drove off in his third year. He intimately knows what dementors are like.

This? Is _not_ it.

No way, no how.

He refuses to poke the whole Master of Death bull, lets that one lie while he focuses on—

Breathing, while he focuses on _breathing_.

In, out.

_In, out._

* * *

He lost consciousness again. This is becoming an unfortunate trend, he thinks groggily as he sits up once more, resting his back against the armrest and leaning with his elbow on a raised knee, his dark silk robe draped around him in a way that doesn’t cover much. But then, he thinks as he notices his state of undress, they are dementors, what do they care about the human body anyway.

“My Lord,” the taller dementor starts.

For the first time Harry can properly hear that it’s not English, in fact, it’s not even close to his native language. Despite that, he understands perfectly what’s being said, and it seems his own unpractised mouth just has issues forming the words, the shapes of the sounds unfamiliar to him. “Can you understand me?” he asks in English, making sure to talk slowly and to enunciate clearly.

“Yes, my Lord,” the tall one says.

Harry grimaces at the address but decides he has other, more significant, battles to fight. Why do they not see him as breakfast, lunch or dinner? Why are they deferring to him? He should be prey, not a _lord_. He understands on a vague level that this has something to do with his temporary ownership of the Hallows, but then _why_ —oh, he has so many questions, he doesn’t know where to start. 

First things first, perhaps. “Why do you call me _my Lord_?”

“Would my Lord prefer to be addressed as Your Majesty instead?” the short dementor inquires. “We presumed—”

Horrified, Harry wildly shakes his head. “No!” he says strongly in their language, and he winces at how wrong it sounds coming from him. “No,” he says, switching to English again, “this is fine, I guess.” 

They seem like they’ll insist on some form of formal address so Harry doesn’t protest further, doesn’t dare provoke them for fear of them showing their true colours; he doubts they’ll be able to hide their nature for very long. They’re predators and they have their prey trapped in a strange building, seated on a worn sofa in the middle of Merlin knows where, with disappearing magic stone doors made of wood and a maze of corridors.

Harry licks his lips as he thinks over his next question. Before he can get much thinking in, however, he hears himself ask, “What was that outside? The desert?”

“That would be the Beyond,” the short dementor says, “your kingdom, my Lord.”

“But it was empty, there was nothing there but dead trees!” Harry exclaims indignantly.

“It has been that way, yes,” the tall dementor answers, “for many years now.”

Unspoken goes the wish for Harry to change that. 

That is, if Harry reads the situation correctly, something which is always up for debate. 

Social cues aren’t exactly Harry’s strong suit as he’s only really used to dealing with Ron and Hermione, and on a lesser scale Ginny, Neville and Luna. He knows how to read Hermione, he knows how to read Ron, knows them better than he knows himself, and, well, that’s about it. How in the world is he going to correctly interpret hooded creatures that he apparently knows nothing of?

Harry longs to go back to bed, to pull the covers up to his chin and just sleep the day away or at least until things start making some sense. Clearly there’s been a mistake and he just wants to go _home_. 

“Does the Beyond have a name?” he asks instead.

“If you wish it so, my Lord,” one of the dementors says, which isn’t very helpful either.

Harry turns and stares at the crackling fire. “So, no,” he says needlessly. The quiet continues and forces his leg to stop bouncing. “Where do you live? What language do you speak?” And then the questions come to him in a rush. “How can I understand you? Why can’t I speak it myself, even though I can understand everything? Where did you learn English?” He takes a deep breath, then continues. “Do you have names? Are there other dementors here? Why did I appear in the Beyond? Has this always been here? Why does nobody talk about it?”

“My lord,” the tall one says with a hint of amusement. “I am Siplec.” Their hands come up, ever so slowly, as if they’re telegraphing every movement—Harry is a little insulted at the implications of that, though they’re not necessarily wrong to do so—and agonisingly slow, bony fingers come out from under wide sleeves only to curl around the edge of the hood of their silky robe, the robe so very similar to what Harry’s current attire. 

The hood falls down onto thin shoulders and Harry’s breath hitches at the sight, a shiver running down his spine. 

“Please forgive us for our improper behaviour, my Lord,” Siplec says, though Harry’s far from listening, “it’s rude to leave our hoods on indoors.”

Harry wants to giggle stupidly, staring openly at the dementor. _Improper_ , he thinks weakly as he stares at the androgynous face, wondering if the creatures have genders. With the hood gone, it’s as though an enchantment has fallen away. The dementor has an actual humanoid face, their lips a light blue, with sunken cheeks and their skin dark but pale, as if Harry’s looking at a walking and talking corpse. The eyes are the worst, he decides as he looks into milky blue orbs.

“My name is Tiseis, my Lord,” the short one says, and this one too lets their hood drop. Tiseis’ skin is a few shades lighter than Siplec’s, with the same pale corpse-like quality to it. They have a thin scar running from the top of their left cheekbone all the way down to their chin. 

Despite their similarities to the human race, there’s no mistaking them for anything but a dementor. They remind Harry a bit of the half-dead trees that he spotted in the Beyond, Tiseis and Siplec caught in a state of half-decay.

Harry gulps. “Oh,” he manages. “Well, er. You’re forgiven, I guess. I’m Harry.”

Siplec’s lips curl into something resembling a smile. The expression looks horridly out of place. “We’re aware, my Lord. However, it’s inappropriate for us to put our Lord’s name in our mouths.”

Harry desperately wants to ask what Siplec means, but he’s trying hard not to show his annoyance at the dementor’s strange speech pattern, with their insistence on using third person rather than directly addressing him. What’s up with _that_? Priorities, he reminds himself, so he takes the easier route and just agrees with a quiet spoken, “Alright.”

“If my Lord would be so kind as to repeat his questions so we may answer them?” Tiseis asks.

“What language do you speak?” Harry says, figures that’s the easiest one out of all the questions running through his mind.

Siplec tilts their head to the side, blue lips pursed for a moment before the dementor visibly relaxes. “I believe naming things is a human concept, my Lord. We have no name for our language, we have never found a need.”

“But _you_ have names,” Harry argues.

Siplec schools their expression into something Harry can’t decipher, and it’s Tiseis who answers. “We have names because we are not things, my Lord,” he says, not unkind.

Harry feels a blush rise on his cheeks. “Right, gotcha,” he mumbles, embarrassed. He wipes at his cheeks, his slip clearly a sign of mental exhaustion, and he realises he needs a break, desperately so. “Listen,” he begins tiredly, “this is very interesting and all, but I’m tired and I’d like to get some sleep.” 

If anything, he wants to be alone to sort out his thoughts, half hoping that it’ll turn out to be some weird dream he’ll have to tell Hermione about, because for some reason she enjoys hearing about strange dreams people have. Merlin, he doesn’t even have his wand on him.

“I would gladly see my Lord to his rooms, my Lord,” Siplec says.

Harry’s beyond caring at this point. Rooms here or his bedroom at home, he doesn’t _care_ anymore, he just wants to be alone and then he wants to sleep and preferably go back to his previous state of ignorance, provided any of this is even true. “Fine,” he says shortly. “I mean, that would be nice, thanks,” he adds quickly. 

He figures if they were going to kill him, they’d have done so already. He doesn’t know if he’s going to be able to actually sleep, but it’ll be nice to try. He tries not to think about the possibility that they may be playing with their prey before eating him.

“Is the rest of the fort like this?” Harry gestures around him, indicating the drawing room.

“I’m afraid so, my Lord,” Tiseis says with a note of shame. Clearly they’re the more open of the two, with Siplec’s apparent marriage to proper conduct. So far all Siplec has let slip is that hint of amusement earlier, but other than that he’s been a blank slate. “We don’t need as much sleep as my Lord does.”

“Well,” Harry says, secretly getting a little tired of this whole my Lord thing, “I’m a human, and we sleep one third of our lives, so…” He trails off meaningfully.

“Hmm.” Siplec presses his blue lips together.

“Of course, my Lord,” Tiseis says easily. “If he would follow me?”

Harry gets to his feet with a groan. Siplec immediately backs up, something Tiseis no doubt would have done as well had they not already been hovering against the far wall, as if neither wish to be too close to him. It’s fine with him, he doesn’t particularly enjoy being in close proximity to dementors either, so that seems a win-win situation.

He waits for the dementors to file out of the room first before following them, leaving a bit of distance between them. They enter the narrow corridor from before, passing several arched doors on their way to the end of the hall, where there are hinges on the wall but no door. This brings to mind another question Harry had earlier but forgot about.

“Why did that door disappear? The one that got me here?”

“Magic, my Lord,” Tiseis says.

“What Tiseis means to say is that the door no longer needed to exist, and so it ceased.”

“But how did it know that?” Harry asks skeptically.

Siplec hesitates for a beat, then, “Magic, my Lord.”

Goddamnit.

But then Harry’s confronted with an entrance hall that could easily rival that of Hogwarts’ had they actually bothered with upkeep. As it is, his feet sink into a carpet made of a thick layer of dust, one that covers everything in the hall like a dirty blanket. The marble steps of the grand staircase shine dully in the light emitted by the enormous candelabra that hangs only from four out of its seven chains. 

“If that thing falls on me, I’m dead,” Harry feels the need to point out.

“Indeed,” Siplec says smoothly.

They go up the grand staircase, taking the left side at the top and then there are more corridors and arched doors leading to rooms. The deeper they go into the fort, the more convinced Harry becomes that he’s entered some sort of labyrinth and there isn’t any hope of getting himself out without help.

They don’t run into any other dementors on their way through the fort, but Harry gets the feeling that they’re there, watching from the shadows. Harry’s too tired now to pay much attention to where they’re going, his sense of direction shot by all the turns they took, and a part of him knows he’d be easy game if they tried anything right now. 

Harry pulls his robes together, less for modesty and more against the slowly creeping cold, but the fabric is thin and it didn’t come with a belt. He wishes for normal clothes.

He wishes for a lot of things.

“My Lord’s chambers,” Tiseis says suddenly, taking a right and stopping in front of a set of heavy looking double doors.

Despite the ornamental walls and a beautifully carved ceiling, the place is rather bare bones, with an empty fireplace, the same type of decayed sofa sat in the middle, a table in front of it, and multiple large dead plants in the corners of the room. There are two doors, both open, one leading to something that from a distance seems to be an office, which means the other one probably leads to the bedroom.

Harry wiggles his toes with disgust; here, too, lies a thick layer of dust.

The gears in his head grind to a squeaky halt when he spots the unmade bed.

It looks and smells like someone died there years ago and they never bothered to take the person out from between the sheets. The bed isn’t moving on its own, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing there. And here he thought the cupboard would have been the worst thing to sleep in, but no. At least his cupboard had been his sanctuary, as much as he loathed it. 

This is something else entirely.

“Are these not to my Lord’s liking, my Lord?” Siplec asks.

Harry turns to face him, grimace still firmly planted on his face. “The bed’s a little…” He pauses, unsure how to put it kindly. His brain isn’t cooperating. “It’s a little dirty,” he sighs.

“I see,” Tiseis says and Siplec nods.

With a wave of Siplec’s bony hand and a whisper that Harry can’t properly hear, the bed—and only that—is suddenly a lot cleaner. It’s still not up to Harry’s standards, who grew up with Aunt Petunia’s high maintenance demands, but it’s clean enough that he doesn’t understand why the rest of the fort is in such a bad condition. That is, he doesn’t get it until he sees Siplec’s form slump against the wall.

“Er, are you alright?” Harry asks.

“It’s nothing that a meal won’t fix, my Lord,” Siplec says.

Harry blanches at the reminder, so casually thrown out there, that these two are in fact dementors and that they feed on happy emotions and, even worse, souls. They’re not his friends or his servants or whatever they fashion themselves to be tonight. They’re predators, and Harry is part of their diet. 

Plus, he thinks hysterically, to prove it, the dementor word for _meal_ is a synonym for _human_.

It’s not a direct translation and it doesn’t sound like something that can be used in just any context, though Harry can’t come up with the word that’s supposed to mean a human _outside_ of food context, if it even exists. 

Does it? 

He wrecks his brain trying to think of the words, because he knows this dementor language in the same strange way someone recognises a blue room as pink in a dream, something that obviously shouldn’t be the case but which is true nonetheless. But he can’t come up with anything that isn’t sustenance related. He does get the sense that _meal_ means someone humanoid rather than just a human like Harry himself, from which he gathers that animals are out but magical creatures, like centaurs and werewolves, definitely aren’t. At least that lines up with what he already knew from _before_. Small mercies.

Thankfully they are as keen to leave him alone as he is to be left that way, and soon he’s on his own with nothing but decaying furniture and dust and the odd sense that this is just the beginning.

* * *

Harry wakes with a shout, clutching his chest, still tangled up in the remnants of a half-forgot dream, expecting to see the ceiling of his bedroom at Grimmauld Place but instead lays eyes on the whimsical carvings of the one in Fort Azkaban.

Shite, he’s going to get fired for missing work, isn’t it?

He groans. 

His life, honestly.


	2. Chapter 2

There’s a beam of sunlight peeking through the gap between the curtains in front of a window he hadn’t noticed before he fell asleep. Was last night a dream inside a dream, _is he still dreaming,_ or is this his new reality?

Harry blinks rapidly until the last of his drowsiness is gone, sitting up slowly. Well, he thinks once he’s fully awake, the easiest course of action is to just go along with this madness. Whatever is the truth, he won’t figure it out staying in bed.

He gets up, stretching his legs with a sigh. Yesterday’s thin robes hang over a wooden chair in the corner, appearing undisturbed. Now that he gives them a good look, he notices that they closely resemble the outer robes those two dementors used. With a shrug he puts it on, pulling on the hems of his sleeves as he folds his arms in front of his chest.

Harry stops short when he sees a dementor hover next to the fireplace in the sitting room. Their hood is down and their eyes are closed, hands folded in front of their stomach. They look peaceful in their imitation of a statue, as much as a dementor can at any rate. 

“Er, hello?” he asks softly. 

The dementor’s hands twitch and their eyes open, unfreezing between one blink and the next. Their hands fall to their sides. “Yes, my Lord?”

Siplec, then. Harry recognises the voice rather than the face, since they all look pretty much alike to him. “Were you sleeping?” he asks curiously.

“I was merely resting, my Lord. We sleep in beds.”

When Harry tries to reply in the dementor language, he comes to the sudden realisation that while he understands most of the words that are being said, his active vocabulary seems to be quite small, almost child-like. The only thing he can come up with is, “Okay, yes.” He’s going to need to practise a lot if he wants to speak the dementor language, assuming they’ll keep him here long enough for that to happen.

Siplec’s thin lips lift up. “My Lord may become our aadarniya samraat ji[?] after all,” they comment, though that seems to be more aimed at themselves than at Harry.

Harry shudders. He doesn’t want to become a samraat, respectable or not, doesn’t want to rule anything at all, thanks. They’re welcome to keep their emperor-shite to themselves. On the other hand, clearly Siplec doesn’t consider him ready to be one yet. The impression Harry got was that he had no choice in the matter, but apparently he’s missing some qualities. He narrows his eyes, insulted despite himself. 

He could totally be one if he wanted to, he just… doesn’t, that’s all.

“If my Lord permits, I would like to show him Kila Adholok.”[?]

Harry blinks. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Kila Adholok, my Lord.” Siplec bows their head slightly before looking up again. “That is what my people call Fort Azkaban. I thought perhaps my Lord may wish to learn more about it.”

“Sure,” he says, uncertain, “lead the way.”

Siplec’s expression shows something so brief that Harry doesn’t have time for it to properly register, but he thinks it may be annoyance. Who knows with dementors, however, perhaps their faces work differently and Harry misread Siplec entirely. “Naturally,” he says.

Harry feels his own expression do something rude before he can stop it.

*

According to Siplec, the fort used to be in prime condition under its previous _samraat_ , though that one only stayed long enough to finalise the details of the last treaty made between Wixen Britain and the dementors. Siplec drowns Harry in information during their tour, droning on in a monotone voice so much so that Harry has long stopped trying to follow where they’re going in lieu of committing the waterfall of facts to memory.

Harry already misses Tiseis, who probably would’ve been a lot less stiff about it. 

That’s not to say the information isn’t interesting, it’s just that there’s a lot of it all at once and Harry is well on his way to a migraine. Most of it is about the fort itself, and they have a story ready for each room they show Harry, functioning as cautionary tales it seems like.

They start at the top of the fort, though through the haze it’s hard to see anything of the environment beyond all the large trees everywhere. It’s interesting to note that dementors, once they step outside, create a thin mist themselves, white wisps curling around their feet and making it hard to see whether they are standing or hovering. Harry knows now, after seeing it inside, that they hover, but going by the mist he wouldn’t have known.

“Many years ago, samraat ji Xekigri grew bored with the slow proceedings of the treaty she tried to negotiate and… moved on, I suppose, from this very spot,” Siplec says. “We don’t know how she did it, just that she did.”

Harry looks at the red cross on the bricks below their feet and presumes that by _moving on_ Siplec means _dying_. “Ah,” he says. “Okay, well, I’ll make sure not to get bored,” he says slowly, not sure if there is another point besides ‘beware of bureaucracy’ to this tale.

“Indeed,” Siplec says. “Now we celebrate their passing annually.”

“What, you celebrate it?” Does _celebrate_ mean something different than what he thinks it does? Don’t they mean _remember_ instead?

“Of course, my Lord.” Siplec hums to themselves. “Samraat ji Xekigri was the one to give us the Festival of the Strong, for which we are still very thankful, and so we celebrate her death every year during the hunt. I must admit that at the time we weren’t very appreciative of it. It was seen as somewhat of an extreme sport, so to speak, very tasteless. Obviously we’ve changed our minds since then.”

“Obviously,” Harry echoes tonelessly. A shiver runs down his spine, but he doesn’t know why this information should bother him enough for a reaction like that. He feels like he’s missing something here, but perhaps that’s just a dementor thing, celebrating one’s death like that.

Slowly they move down, floor by floor, until they’re standing in the entrance hall again, still as dusty and dirty as last night, though there’s dull sunlight shining through the leaded glass windows, the lead causing strange patterns on the brick tiles. They’re all details Harry missed in the dark last night.

It’s when Siplec is explaining the vast history of the courtyard to Harry that they run into the third dementor Harry has met so far. The dementor in question has their hood up, moving quickly past them, but then halfway across the courtyard they stop and turn. At a much slower pace they return to Siplec and Harry, and then the hood comes off.

“Zallah,” Siplec says.

“Siplec, sir,” Zallah says with a grin.

Siplec’s expression sours. “What are you doing here, javaan?”[?] The way they say it makes it sound like an insult, rather than just another word. “Shouldn’t you be at the temple?”

Zallah glares.

Siplec turns toward Harry. “My Lord, may I introduce Zallah. They are still young, please forgive them.”

“Sure,” Harry says in English. “Hello, I’m Harry, I’m—er—new around here.”

“This is where you bow, child,” Siplec says to Zallah in whatever language they speak.

“Mein koi baccha nahi hoon!”[?] Zallah bursts out. “And why, what’d they say?” They look intrigued. “Mujhe samajh nahi aa raha hai.”[?]

The younger dementor’s speech is rapid and very hard to understand when spoken so fast and in particular with that accent, and Harry misses half of the words and ends up not being able to translate most of it. They seem outright energetic compared to the older ones, or at least, Harry assumes Tiseis is older as well, automatically lumping them in with Siplec.

“ _He_ , Zallah.” Siplec looks pained. “And he speaks the language of the food.” 

(That’s not what the dementor meant, but it’s what Harry hears regardless.)

“Sorry, I forgot they do that. He, then. What’d he say?”

“He is to be our aadarniya samraat ji,” Siplec says tightly. “It would behoove you to show our Lord some respect.”

Zallah looks impressed, their face so incredibly expressive that it makes Harry’s skin crawl a little bit. Is this what normal dementors are like? Are Siplec and Tiseis exceptions to the rule, or is it Zallah who is the strange one here? Tiseis seemed so laidback when Harry compared them to Siplec, but honestly, those two are stiff as boards compared to Zallah.

Then Zallah bows. “Our new samraat ji? Neat.”

Harry doesn’t know how to tell Zallah that this has all been one hell of a misunderstanding, so his tactic is to ignore it altogether. “Siplec see… _show_ …” Harry tries in dementor-speak. He gestures his hand in a circle, “... this. Here. Er.” He scratches the back of his head. “Azkaban? I mean, Kila Adholak.”

“I was showing my Lord around Kila Adholok,” Siplec corrects smoothly.

“Yes, that,” Harry agrees. The words feel so odd in his throat. 

“Azkaban!” Zallah says. “I know that one, it’s what a meal calls the island.”

Harry sighs at the automatic translation in his head. It’s really unfortunate that those words are synonyms. He knows there’s another word for food but it’s not in his active vocabulary yet, though he plans on making use of it once he learns it. He points at his bare chest, not cold despite the fact he’s only wearing the thin robes. “Human.”

Zallah nods. “Must’ve been awful,” they say with sympathy easily readable on their face. “My Lord,” they add quickly.

“Is okay,” Harry says, frowning a little at the use of the past tense. He’s still human, master of death bull or not. “I live.”

Surprisingly, Zallah cracks up into hyena-like laughter, and Harry tries to hide his grimace at the sight and the sound of it. 

Tiseis joins them then, sidling up behind Siplec, wearing curiosity on their face. “I see you’re having a very productive day, Zallah,” they say mildly. “Perhaps if you’d paid more attention to the vazir ji[?] you would have been able to understand my Lord when he spoke in his own language,” they chide.

“I do my best, mama ji,”[?] Zallah says with a shrug, though they seem to be holding back more words than just that.

“Well, do better,” Siplec says with clipped tones.

Meanwhile, Harry goes cross-eyed trying to fit mama ji and vazir ji into what he knows, but all that comes to him are literal translations, and they don’t make much sense to him. For the first time since coming here, he actually considers the idea that the dementors might have a culture that he’s entirely unaware of. He vaguely remembers hearing about the temple the prison of Azkaban was built on, back when Sirius—but it’d been nothing more than a passing remark and nobody had commented on it or elaborated.

“I’m not stupid, mama ji, we just haven’t got there yet,” Zallah complains.

“Who is your vazir ji?” Siplec asks.

“Dzal,” Tiseis and Zallah respond simultaneously.

“Dzal of the Adholok temples? You moved here? Why and when.” It’s not a question, it’s a demand. “I was under the impression you went to the Eguji district for your temple lessons. No wonder you’ve been hanging around Kila Adholok so much.”

Zallah shuffles in place. “It was a summer ago. I didn’t learn well under vazir ji Yiori, sir.”

“Okay, someone say what is vazir ji?” Harry interrupts in broken dementor-speak before Siplec can demand further explanation from Zallah.

“They are the temple elders, my Lord,” Tiseis says. “They are the most wise of us, it’s an honour to become vazir.” Their blind gaze rests on Zallah for a moment before coming back to Harry, who shivers under the attention. “My Lord will meet them, Zallah will show him.”

“But—okay,” Zallah sighs. “I mean, yes, mama ji.”

“My Lord will find that most of us are far removed from humans. We learn your language at the temple, but for the past three and a half centuries we have had no use for it, thus the javaan don’t pay as much attention to the lessons as they should. There are much more interesting things to learn than a dead language, after all.”

Zallah’s shuffling intensifies at being put on the spot like that. Harry almost feels bad for them but then remembers that’s a dementor, and his sympathy goes down a notch.

“Well,” Tiseis begins, “there are some, one group in particular, that still—”

“Tiseis,” Siplec warns.

Tiseis hums. “I apologise, I didn’t realise I had to censor myself around my Lord,” they say, sounding irritated at being interrupted.

Harry wonders what they were about to say, curious despite himself, but Siplec suggests they walk around the grounds for now, and Harry can’t do anything but follow, and soon he’s drowning in so much information that whatever the dementor was about to say completely slips from his mind.

*

Zallah follows the three of them around, going so far as to follow them out of the courtyard, through the arched tunnel, ending up in the middle of a forest. “Adholok ka Van,”[?] Tiseis says, breathing in the air around them. All their hoods are down and seeing what looks to be a corpse sniffing the air is quite a sight. There’s a small path under their feet leading into the forest. “Or the Forest of Azkaban as my Lord may know it.” They start walking the path, the others quickly following.

“I don’t know it,” Harry confesses.

“Pity,” Tiseis says simply before stepping over a log.

The forest around them is dense, the trees old and gnarled. Harry knows without a doubt that if he’d been alone and took even one step off the path he’d be lost within moments. From what he’s seen of the castle so far, it doesn’t match the inside, but then, that’s the case with a lot of Wixen homes too.

They walk until they come across a rock formation, a fence and a large arched gate in front of it. There’s a bell hanging off the side and Siplec janks on the rope attached to it. On the other side of the fence the dirt path turns into a brick path. It doesn’t take very long for someone or something to come walking toward them, a dementor if their complexion is any indication, their hood down.

“Welcome to the northern temple of Adholok, my Lord,” Tiseis says. “It is customary to wait to be let in rather than go in by oneself.”

“Duly noted,” Harry says solemnly. The last thing he wants to do is offend them, after all. If that means waiting to get invited in like some sort of freaking vampire, then so be it.

The dementor reaches them, dark skin just as sickly looking as the other three dementors at Harry’s side. They open the gate fully then step aside to let them all through. “Come,” they say in a voice so deep that Harry can’t help but think of the dementor as a man, even though he knows by now that’s not how they do things. “My Lord, Siplec, Tiseis.” The dementor pauses. “Javaan.”

“My Lord, this is vazir ji Dzal,” Tiseis says courtly.

“Dadi ji,”[?] Zallah says politely with a bow.

“You missed morning classes,” the temple eldest says.

“I wanted to see our new samraat, sir,” Zallah says so earnestly Harry almost believes it.

Almost.

“Off with you,” Dzal growls, pointing behind them. “Go find pujaree ji Yecsu, I’m sure they have some work left for you.”

Zallah flees the scene, leaving Harry with three very serious looking dementors. “It’s a pleasure to meet our new samraat ji.” Their lips curl up. “I’m sure one day my Lord will one day be our _aadarniya_ samraat ji.”

“But I have to earn it first,” Harry guesses, reminded of Siplec saying something similar.

“Indeed, my Lord.” Dzal looks at the other two dementors. “I will see our Lord safely back at Kila Adholok, you needn’t stay. I’m sure you have important things to be doing.”

*

Harry follows Dzal down the brick path then between the rocks and then through an opening. The mist left by Dzal is thin enough that Harry can see clearly, the caverns they’re entering illuminated by torches. “I thought dementors could see in the dark,” he says stupidly.

“We can in Paralok, my Lord,”[?] Dzal murmurs as they go around a corner. “But here, in Adholok, we see only shapes and silhouettes.”

“Is Adholok only the island, or everything in this realm?” Harry asks curiously, emboldened by the extra information Dzal gave him free of charge, without having to ask for it even.

Dzal pauses. “That depends on context, my Lord. It can mean both,” they say. “This wasn’t always the case, it’s only since the humans came to the island that it’s come to mean both. They’re too curious for their own good. They built their prison on our old temple site, made a mockery of our southern temple.” It sounds like an old complaint. “Samraat ji Xekigri insisted, however.”

“Sounds like you didn’t agree with that decision,” Harry says carefully, feeling as if he’s about to step into a minefield that he’s not ready for.

Dzal gives a harsh chuckle. “I disagreed with many of her decisions. It doesn’t matter now, my Lord. Please, follow me.”

Harry, who stopped paying attention to his surroundings in favour of listening to Dzal speak, looks around him. They’re in an enormous cave, torches everywhere, walls covered in red and white paint. There are mats lining the walls with dementors kneeling on them, a hollowed out slot in the wall next to them, with blue orbs floating in some of them.

“They are praying,” Dzal explains quietly.

“To whom?” Harry asks, unable to mask his surprise at that. “You have gods? Or just one?”

“None at all, my Lord,” the dementor explains. “We pray to the samraats of old, mainly those who were known to bring prosperity to our people. Aadarniya samraat ji Knar, the one before samraat ji Xekigri, is a popular one with the javaans.”

“And javaans are the younger dementors, right?”

“Correct, my Lord.”

“What did Knar do?” 

Dzal looks disapproving. “He waged a war.” They shake their head slowly, their robes swishing around their feet. Harry has to be careful not to step on it. “He didn’t see eye to eye with some of his advisors. They were terrible times, but we’re lucky that it’s in the past now.” They keep walking through the large open space until they reach a wide tunnel that leads into another cavern.

This cave is filled with tables and chairs, dementors sitting everywhere, and the walls are lined with bookcases, all bursting with books. It doesn’t take Harry long at all to connect the dots and realise that it’s a library. 

How perfectly… ordinary. 

“You have books,” Harry says weakly.

Dzal looks unamused. “Of course we do, my Lord. We’re not barbarians.”

 _Could’ve fooled me_ , Harry doesn’t say, but he has the feeling that despite that it’s visible on his face anyway. Perhaps he should learn how to school his expression better, much like Dzal, who mostly looks calm apart from the downturn of their blue lips and the minute twitch of their left eye that Harry picked up on. They’re better at hiding their feelings than Siplec, or perhaps Siplec had just been feeling even _less_ amused with Harry at the time, who knows what goes through a dementor’s head.

“Our young ones come here to study our ways and to learn some measure of control. Some are better at it than others, some have been here for… a very long time.” Dzal directs them toward the bookcases in the back. “The stronger they are, the longer they tend to remain with us. Our friend Zallah has been with us for a while now.” They grab a book from one of the shelves, a thick but clean tome.

Harry takes it from them and stares at the cover. It takes a bit for the beautiful swirls to come into focus, but then he can read it. “Samraat Knar ka itihaas,” he reads out loud, the words pulling at his throat but there’s nothing for it, he has to get used to it. “The history of Emperor Knar?”

“Correct,” Dzal says solemnly. “Perhaps my Lord would like to spend some time here with the young dementors, learning alongside them. There is much he doesn’t know, after all. That particular book,” here they wave at the tome Harry’s still holding, “will help him with some of our recent history.”

“I thought samraat Xekigri was the last one.”

“Samraat ji Xekigri was indeed, but that doesn’t mean she had a lot of impact on the current state of events. True, she closed the gates,” Dzal says, walking over to a table and pulling out a chair, gesturing for Harry to sit down. “But what she was trying to accomplish was merely a bandaid to a larger problem. There is much political unrest dividing our land that my Lord should know about.”

Oh no. _Politics_.

“But let’s start with something light today, such as our beautiful temple.”

Harry doesn’t sigh with relief but it’s a close thing.

*

Dzal tells him all about the temple and its history. It’s not a very interesting history; on the island there is the only natural portal to the Beyond, or Paralok as they call it, and once upon a time the dementors came through it and settled upon the island, where they then chiseled their temples out of rock formations and clay. The first ones to discover them were the nomadic vampire clans who had laid claim to the island long before but didn’t visit often enough to realise that someone had stolen their land.

Nobody remembers much of anything of those first years, how the negotiations had gone or how they came upon the agreement to let vampires and other undead through the portal. The stories go that Death himself was their emperor at the time and had forced the vampire clans into submission, but everyone alive then has long since passed on, so there is nobody to confirm it.

Most of this is glossed over, seen as ancient history, but Harry’s curious about it, which is when Dzal introduces him to the expression ‘being curious food’: when the humans came, the dementors had tried to scare them off, but the curious humans kept coming back for more, and eventually they even invented a spell that made it hard to get at them.

After peace negotiations, they built their prison on top of the ruins of the western temple, which at the time had collapsed just previous to their arrival. In exchange, the dementors staying at the temples on the island were allowed to take a certain amount of souls every autumn, the timing coinciding with the Wild Hunt.

“The Wild Hunt?” Harry asks.

“That is for later,” Dzal says somewhat hesitantly.

According to Dzal, the temples in Paralok are more impressive, but they’ve not been there themselves in centuries, since they became the vazir of the temple in fact. The furthest they’ve gone is to Kila Adholok, and not in recent years either as they’ve had no need for it.

“Now that my Lord has returned, perhaps I shall endeavor to leave more often,” Dzal says with a satisfied little smile. 

“You should,” Harry says seriously. “Kila Adholok is… beautiful. It’s old and gross, but I can see that it used to be beautiful.”

“It used to be a place of marvel, yes,” Dzal agrees somberly. “But this, too, fell into a state of decay, just like the rest of the land. We grew listless, there was no more point to keeping the castle clean. There is little of us left now, my Lord. We used to be more than just this.” They look sad. “Perhaps now we can go back to that.”

Despite himself, Harry feels a pang of sympathy. He can’t imagine what that must be like, but for the first time he feels sorry for the dementors. 

He feels sorry. 

For _dementors_.

What in the world?

Then Dzal stands, towering over him like the big bad dementor they are, and for long moments Harry’s heart is racing in his throat, his hands clammy, and any second now—but no. There is nothing but the warmth from the torch closest to them and the hard chair at his back. Dzal’s hood is still down, showing a face that had at one point no doubt been handsome but now just freaks Harry out, with the dead stare and the sickly skin and the skeletal features. 

“Are you alright, my Lord?” Dzal’s deep voice asks kindly.

That yanks Harry out of his bad memories and he relaxes marginally.

*

The thing is, Harry’s still terrified of dementors. That hasn’t changed in the slightest since coming here, but apart from that initial showing off, there have been no dementor power displays, no flashes of green and blood gushing out of flesh wounds, no screams and no pleading. There has been nothing of the sort. That and the fact that when they have their hoods down they look just like a corpse dressed in oversized robes. Harry wouldn’t call them harmless per se, but the sight of them is definitely not what he associates with his deepest fears.

*

When they’re ready to return to Kila Adholok, Zallah joins them once more. “Please, mama ji,” they beg. “I’m so bored.”

Dzal gives the young dementor a long-suffering look but then sighs, turns and walks away.

Zallah and Harry share a look and the javaan shrugs before they decide that following the vazir is the best course of action. Dzal is _fast_ , and it takes them a second to catch up, Harry conscious of the fact that it’s generally seen as rude to run through a holy place. Surely a dementor temple is no different?

Dzal is already waiting for them outside, then at a more sedate pace starts walking the brick path again toward the outer gates. He pauses there. “I will leave you here.”

“You’re not coming with?” Harry asks.

“Not today, my Lord, unless he wishes for me to accompany him.” Dzal nods. “Then, I will come. Otherwise, Zallah will see him back to the castle.”

“No pressure,” Zallah says drily.

*

For all that Zallah is almost vibrating with energy, he’s quiet as they descend the dirt part back to Kila Adholok, no doubt keeping all of it contained inside his dead body. But Harry knows that type of energy, he has seen it often enough in people who met the Boy-Who-Lived for the first time. Zallah is the same, the only difference being the title that Harry holds that excites them.

“Say it,” Harry says in his broken dementor-speak. “Ask.”

“What’s it like being samraat, my Lord?” Zallah seems to instantly regret their question but they don’t correct themselves. “I mean, you understand me, right?”

“Yes. I talk bad, but I understand if you speak slower,” Harry tries. It sounds wrong when he hears it, but he can’t put his finger on which part it is that doesn’t sound good. “And I don’t know what samraat is like. New, remember. Same as asking what is like being dementor? Don’t know that.”

“But I _do_ know what it’s like being a dementor, my Lord,” Zallah says. “I am one, just as you are samraat ji Potter.”

“Rude to say name,” Harry points out, remembering.

“I bet that’s what Siplec or Tiseis said,” Zallah says, sounding disgusted. “Your first name is off-limits, yes, but using your last name is only a _little_ bit rude, my Lord.”

Harry hums. “What it like, then?”

“Being a dementor?”

“Yes,” Harry says, “what it mean to you?”

“My Lord is curious as food,” Zallah says, impressed. “That’s a good sign, if anything.”

Harry bursts into surprised laughter. “Vazir ji Dzal say same.”

“Being a dementor is…” Zallah pauses, actually stops walking as they think about the question. “It’s learning at the temple together when you’re young. Bringing small offerings to the stars. I don’t know, my Lord. We spend a lot of time at the temple. I know it didn’t use to be the case, at least not this much, but we have little else to do other than hunt, and I’m not allowed on my own yet, not until I’ve gone through the Festival of the Strong.” They puff up a little. “Vazir ji Dzal says I’m almost ready.”

“Is good,” Harry says with a nod.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I mentioned this before, but what the Hindi words mean isn't always what they're supposed to mean in my fic, though I have the (correct) translations if you hover over the ? behind each. This apparently doesn't work on mobile, so here is a list of the words so far:
> 
> Aadarniya = respectable  
> Samraat = emperor  
> Kila = fort  
> Adholok = the underworld (my meaning: island of Azkaban)  
> Paralok = heaven (my meaning: the Beyond)  
> Van = forest  
> Javaan = youth (my meaning: young dementor)  
> Vazir = minister, chief advisor (my meaning: temple eldest)
> 
> Mama = maternal uncle (my meaning: used to address mantris, upamantris and kiledars)  
> Dadi = grandmother (my meaning: used to address vazirs)
> 
> Mein koi baccha nahi hoon = I'm not a child  
> Mujhe samajh nahi aa raha hai = I'm not understanding them
> 
> Chapter 3 is... about 75% written, so don't expect another fast update haha. I'm all out of things to post now.


	3. Chapter 3

The castle is beautiful from the outside, surrounded by enormous trees, but simultaneously it looks rundown and abandoned, branches sweeping the floor and poking through broken windows. The ground is littered with glass shards and wayward leaves and other rubbish, and it desperately needs a good clean-up, much like the rest of the castle, inside and out.

Harry and Zallah go through the arched gates to the courtyard, and it’s only now that Harry spots the portal. He doesn’t know how he missed it, but it’s there alright; it looks like someone spilled liquid sky between two pillars, both with a torch hanging off the side. The portal is roughly two metres wide and swirls around and around as Harry watches, mesmerised by its beauty.

“Magnificent, isn’t it, my Lord?” Siplec’s voice interrupts.

Harry shudders and turns to face the dementor. “Yes,” he agrees, “very.” He clears his throat and steps back from both the dementor and the portal, creating what feels like a much safer distance between them, though it leaves him standing closer to Zallah. For some reason that’s a less intimidating thought. “So this is the portal to Paralok?”

“Correct, my Lord. It’s closed now to everyone but maut ke sevak.”[?]

It takes Harry’s brain a second to put those words together. “Death’s servants,” he repeats, thinking that over, “is that how you think of yourself?”

There’s a half-smile on Siplec’s face. “It’s simply what we are, my Lord. We serve the Master of Death, whether they are the chosen one—”

Harry grimaces at that.

“—or they come from a long line of successors, their origins don’t matter. The only thing that matters is that they are Mrutyu ke Swami.”[?]

“And I’m a Mrutyu ka Swami,”[?] Harry whispers.

“My Lord found the Hallows and reunited them, did he not?” Siplec says almost gently, as if guiding Harry to the right conclusion.

“Collecting the Hallows makes me the current Master of Death.” Harry swallows as the thought bounces around in his head, denial still strong in his veins, yet it’s slowly coming together. “Which means I’m the emperor now,” he says weakly.

“Correct,” Siplec says.

Zallah nods. “You’ll do great, my Lord!”

Siplec stares hard at Zallah. “Mind your manners, child.”

“What did I do _now_?” the javaan grouses.

The older dementor bares their teeth for just a second before they purse their lips instead. “We don’t address our samraat ji directly. You should have learned this long ago.”

“Well, forgive me, sir, but I’ve never met one before!”

“Mind. Your. _Manners_.”

Zallah huffs and looks away. “I apologise, sir.”

“So,” Harry butts in quickly, “this portal, it’s closed now, you said?” As if he hasn’t heard about that particular fact all afternoon. “How do I open it? I don’t see a reason to not let others go through. Vampires? Sure, I can deal with those.” He hopes, anyway.

He walks up to the portal. From up close it’s even more beautiful, with numerous twinkling stars shining brightly, swirling and pulled around by tendrils of what looks to be pure magic. He leans closer and touches the liquid sky. It feels silky around his finger, so smooth it’s wet, but when he pulls his finger back it’s completely dry.

He cocks his head. 

“Wait, no, my Lord can’t just—”

Instinct guides him as he puts his entire hand inside the sky-lit portal and concentrates hard on the wish to open it up for all undeads. A terrible screeching sound drowns out whatever else Siplec had wanted to say. The portal flashes light blue then settles down to what it was before. While Harry flinches away from the bright light, the dementors seem unphased, as if they didn’t notice.

Siplec clears their throat. “I’m sure my Lord has realised that Kila Adholok isn’t ready for visitors yet,” they say diplomatically, though their expression is a little tight around the edges.

Harry raises his eyebrows. “Will they magically know that the gates are open without us telling them about it?”

“No, my Lord,” they say.

“Then I don’t see the problem.”

“Not until we light the torches,” Siplec adds, nodding at the ones in question.

“It’s not like the jonks[?] are gonna come out, they hate us now,” Zallah says, then they bare their numerous sharp, pointy teeth in a mockery of a grin. “So we eat them. They taste good.”

Harry can easily guess that jonk is a derogatory way to refer to a vampire, doesn’t need Siplec’s quiet warning of, “Zallah, we’ve spoken about this,” to understand he shouldn’t use it in polite company, but apparently Zallah’s judgement is compromised or they just don’t care.

Zallah looks away. “Pishaachs[?] then. Sorry, mama ji, but the vampires hate us.”

Harry sincerely doubts that’s how things are, rather he thinks it’s the other way around, that vampires hate dementors because vampires feature on the menu. So he won’t have to worry about them, at least. Thestrals, on the other hand, how interesting. “Does the island have thestrals? Or do they just travel here on their own? Are they smart enough for that?”

“What’s my Lord saying?” Zallah asks, but they go ignored.

“They are not, my Lord.” Siplec hesitates. “My Lord, I would like to state for the record that we don’t eat vampires, despite what Zallah would have you believe. Zallah is jesting, though they are right that we have been on shaky terms with vampires in the past few centuries.” Siplec stares directly at a grinning Zallah for a long moment. “Javaan,” they say, as if that explains everything.

Harry hides a grin despite himself. “I don’t think I’d appreciate jokes about being on the menu either,” he says.

“Indeed, my Lord,” Siplec agrees. “The pishaachs are beneficial to us, though I’m sad to say the younger ones don’t appreciate that enough. We’ve been without vampires for many centuries. Most of the javaans have never met one.”

“How are the vampires beneficial?” Harry asks curiously.

“For the lands, my Lord, the economy.” Siplec seems almost eager to discuss this topic. “There are many vampire clans with thestral herds. They used to come here to let their herds stay in Paralok, when they were allowed to travel freely. They rented lands off our people, they brought entertainment and an economy to us, they brought us a lot.”

“But then samraat ji Xekigri came and didn’t like them and forbade them access,” Zallah ends the explanation, shuffling on the balls of their skeletal feet. It’s interesting that they want to be included in the conversation even though they can’t understand Harry’s replies.

“Yes,” Siplec says, “for all the good samraat ji Xekigri brought us, this was a grave mistake. Now the javaans make food jokes about them, call them undeserved derogatory terms.” They shake their head with clear disapproval.

“When do you think we should let the undead know they can come through the portal again?” Harry wonders out loud. He has no clue how these things are supposed to go and what all needs to be done to let them through.

Siplec doesn’t need to think about it for very long. “We should have the castle and the grounds cleaned up before we let guests pass through, my Lord. The pishaachs will see it as a weakness if the place isn’t at least habitable again. We will borrow the javaan from the temples for this.” Here they look pointedly at Zallah. “After all, they are very experienced with keeping those clean.”

“Should I tell vazir ji Dzal, mama ji?” Zallah offers.

“No,” Siplec says, “go find Tiseis, they’ll take charge. I will send vazir ji Dzar a raven.”

“Aren’t you on equal ground?” Harry asks then before he can help himself. “You and Dzar and Tiseis, I mean? That’s the impression I got from Dzar so far,” he adds haltingly.

“Not entirely, my Lord. I’m the mantri[?] of the region known as Adholok, which consists of the lands closest to the gateway on either side. Tiseis is the kiledar[?] of Adholok.” They pause briefly. “The castellan. Dzar is the vazir, the temple eldest, of the two temples on the island. Vazirs and mantris enjoy the same privileges, so to speak, whereas Tiseis is a rank below us, on the same level as an upamantri[?], the mayors of the cities. Does that explain things adequately?”

 _Cities_ , oh god. He knew about the village on the island, but he hadn’t known about there being entire cities full of dementors. Harry’s mind is swimming with new information, slotting the new puzzle pieces into place and then finding others that he doesn’t know what to do with yet. “For now,” he says with a small smile.

*

With Siplec on the way to the tower where the ravens are kept and Zallah hunting down Tiseis, Harry is left to his own devices, and he uses this time to explore the castle some more. Leaving the portal behind, he walks up the grand staircase on the opposite side of the arched gates leading outside and he enters the open gallery. He wonders what it’ll look like clean. He can see the swirling motifs and mosaics through the thick layer of dust, and has the feeling that it’ll be quite a sight.

The open gallery leads into a hall, just as dusty as the rest of the castle, and Harry’s sure he spies a dementor quickly turning the corner. At the temple he hadn’t been avoided so much as just plain ignored by the javaans, but so far the only dementors he’s met in Kila Adholok have been Siplec and Tiseis, the rest fleeing from him.

Odd.

Harry closes his robes in front of his chest, starting to get a little chilly, and resolves to find Tiseis to speak about clothes or something. They’re the keeper of the castle, the kiledar, after all, they should know about those things. Do dementors have wardrobes or do they just wear those same robes all day every day?

He should probably ask.

Harry walks the castle at his leisure, taking his time, making use of the fact that the other dementors seem to be running away from him. He can’t think of why they would, he’s not the predator in this scenario, but he puts it out of his mind when he enters some sort of weapons hall, the walls lined with banners showing off beautiful crests, most of them showing the same two bears but there are a few other ones too. Under each set is a plaque with the same swirly lettering he saw on the books in the temple. About half of the wall is filled with shields, and at the end hangs a blank one, with a blank plaque.

Is that going to be his?

He looks around once more and then spots the last one is the same two bears as the majority of the others, but the plaque says _Obike Xekigri_. They said the bloodline died with her, so that’s the last time the two bears are going to show up on the wall, isn’t it? It’s a little sad but Harry’s already moved on to the next room when he wonders how old she had been when she became samraat—as young as Harry? Older? Or worse, _younger_? 

The next few rooms are just empty spaces, one a little larger than the others. In one of the rooms he finds the dementor of the hour, Tiseis, surrounded by four other dementors, but their hoods are _drawn_ , and they’re the sort of dementors that Harry has expected to see all along but has yet to spot, and here they finally are and his wand— 

Harry’s heart is racing within an instant and he yearns for his wand, his breath stuck in his throat at the sight of them, but his wand is still on his nightstand at home, it’s useless to him now, except suddenly he’s holding something familiar, an object that has Tiseis’ eyes widen with alarm. 

Harry doesn’t waste any time, however, “Expecto—” 

“Down, _quickly_ now,” Tiseis snaps at the dementors, skeletal and grotesque.

He pauses, frozen between one breath and the next with astonishment as the four monstrosities drop to their knees as one, but that’s apparently not what Tiseis had in mind, because they hiss through gritted teeth, “No, your _hood_ , fools!”

Harry lowers the elder wand. “It’s—” He takes a deep breath, feels like he’s been thrown in the deep end again even though after spending a day in their presence he should be used to it by now. “It’s alright.” It’s not alright and he wishes he could hide that fact better, but his hands are trembling, and he balls them into fists, curling his fingers around the elder wood.

“My Lord, my deepest apologies,” Tiseis says, still looking pissed. “You four, leave us.”

They stand and flee, pale humanoid faces looking down at the mosaic floor as they get out.

“Again, I apologise, my Lord,” Tiseis says. “Would my Lord prefer the old custom to be reinstated that mandates hoods should be left down in the castle rather than just in his presence?”

Harry swallows thickly, still shaken from that close encounter with actual, honest to god dementors, something he’d really rather wouldn’t repeat. “I would appreciate that a lot, yes, thank you,” he croaks. “I was—er—I was just about to look for you.”

Tiseis straightens. “My Lord was?”

“Yes,” Harry says, then with only the slightest tremble in his free hand gestures at his current attire. “I would like some actual robes. I woke up in the Beyond with these, and I’m—yeah, I’d like some clothes, please, if that’s—yeah,” he finishes awkwardly. He wishes he had some sort of pocket he could put the elder wand away in but there’s nothing for it other than holding onto it.

“Naturally,” the kiledar says, and just like that their angry expression dissipates. “Perhaps once my Lord has his own cloak and robes, he will lose that fear,” they say thoughtfully.

“I’m not _afraid_ ,” Harry denies instantly.

“Of course not, my Lord. I wouldn’t dream of implying my Lord has issues with us.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Harry mutters. When he looks up, Tiseis is smiling indulgently.

“My Lord’s chambers have a wardrobe that he should like to inspect. If my Lord would follow me?” they offer, and upon Harry’s wordless nod they bow at the waist before walking off.

Harry briefly looks down at the elder wand before hurriedly following the dementor. 

At least he has his magic back.

*

Harry tries to pay attention to the directions, but he’s too busy wondering about the elder wand. There’s strange magic in this place, from the door he first came through to the way the wand appeared in his hand when he thought he needed it. Isn’t that the same way the door had appeared in the first place, because he’d needed it at the time? And then it’d disappeared because it had served its purpose. He hopes the elder wand isn’t going to disappear on him like that, because it’s definitely not done serving its purpose of giving Harry a sense of protection. 

Harry and Tiseis walk through a lot of hallways and corridors and then Harry recognises an alcove close to the doors to his rooms, recognises it because it’s light and airy and it reminded him of one at Hogwarts, with a built-in bench and big pillows that some form of insect with big teeth seems to have taken a liking to. Harry sincerely hopes that whatever caused those holes has long since left, because it’s not a pretty sight.

They enter his chambers, and to his right is the wardrobe Tiseis mentioned. “I will leave my Lord to it then,” Tiseis says, bowing once more and then taking their leave.

Harry opens the wardrobe and blinks at the clothes he finds there.

Well, beggars can’t be choosers.

*

By the time Harry has selected something that doesn’t make him feel like he stepped several centuries into the past, Dzal has sent their javaans to the castle for Operation Clean Up; there are about twenty or so young dementors cleaning up with both magic and muggle means, and the sight of a dementor with a broom is hilarious and makes Harry wish for a camera. He half expects Dzal to show up too, but when it comes to duties, there are very clear lines in the sand, and Tiseis is the one who goes over the castle, as kiledar and all that.

Dzal is in charge of the temples on the island of Adholok, Tiseis take care of the castle and Siplec is something like a regional manager, or so Harry understood from their talks. They’re usually so incredibly busy that they don’t have the time of day to entertain Harry much. Still, Harry enjoys the few conversations they’ve had so far, they’re definitely an interesting character. They’re barely at the castle during the cleaning, having left through the portal after notifying Dzal of the plan.

It takes two full days of cleaning before Tiseis deems the castle ready. It’s far from spotless, and Harry’s sure the more snobbish vampires will have something to say about it, but the dust is gone and the courtyard is no longer moss green and slippery. The beautiful motifs on the walls are visible once more.

Harry could probably have sped up a lot of the cleaning with the help of the elder wand now that it’s in his possession, but he’s too busy bothering a harried-looking Dzal at the eastern temple while the young dementors make the castle habitable once more. He has yet to visit the village inside Adholok ka Van, what the dementors call the forest of Welldesn. Part of him doesn’t want to see how they live, doesn’t want them to become real people that aren’t just the monsters from his past, so he’s been postponing it.

Dzal doesn’t push him, though they’ve brought it up a few times, and every time Harry makes sure to distract them with interesting tidbits of his life from before, because for some reason Dzal is _fascinated_ by it and they always take the bait.

*

It’s a beautiful afternoon when everyone gathers in the courtyard, surrounding the portal. It’s not just the javaans but the dementors from the village have joined them as well and then there’s the castle staff of course. There are so many of them, all with their hoods down thank god, that the courtyard is positively swarming with them.

Harry would have stood somewhere far away from them, but instead he’s at the centre of it, with Dzal beside him. Even though the dementors all look alike, Harry can spot Zallah from kilometres away because the javaan waves happily at him from the other side of the portal, making him snort and Dzal discreetly roll their eyes.

Today they’re going to light the torches hanging from each of the two pillars, the portal shimmering between them. Somehow that will let all the undead know that the portal has been opened once more. How, Harry has no clue, and throughout the day he got more and more curious, the anticipatory vibes of everyone around him contagious.

Siplec walks over to one of the pillars and Tiseis takes the other, both holding up a hand. At Harry’s side, Dzal is wearing a serious expression, but there’s something about them that screams anticipation and a bit of excitement even. Apparently it’s the first time in many years that Dzal has left the temple for anything other than moving between the northern and the eastern ones.

Then a hush falls over the gathered crowd and in the silence Siplec and Tiseis speak in tandem, “Jalao idhar.”[?]

The torches light up with a _whoosh_ , blue fire, a slow burn at first but then steadily gaining strength. Harry feels a shiver run down his spine, feels as though he just witnessed something that will go down in the history books with his name plastered all over it. In the back of his mind church bells start ringing, but the sound is soft and easily ignored. 

Harry tilts his head curiously. “You have magic,” he says to Dzal.

Dzal gives him the most genuine smile he’s seen of a dementor so far. “Yes, my Lord.”

*

Now that the portal is open, Harry figures it’s time to check up on home. His friends must be worried sick by now, and he hadn’t had time to send them a letter with one of the ravens yet. He probably should have, but every time he thought of it, something else had come up, and now he’s a few days into this new adventure and he hasn’t got in contact with his friends yet.

Siplec has left and Dzal has gone back to their temples, but Tiseis can always be found somewhere in the castle, a permanent fixture. Harry’s happy enough with his new robes but he can’t wait to get back to his own wardrobe. He finds Tiseis in the library, a large circular room three stories high with books from floor to ceiling and a set of narrow ceiling-high windows overlooking the forest outside, the peak of the rock formation the northern temple is built inside shown in the distance.

“Tiseis,” Harry greets, coming up to the dementor and sitting in the free chair at the table.

“Is everything alright, my Lord?”

“Yeah, yeah, it’s fine,” Harry says with a nod. “I was just thinking that I’d like to go home.”

Tiseis seems confused for a second, then their expression clears. “Ah, to Paralok.”

“No,” Harry says with a shake of his head. “You misunderstand. I want to go _home_.”

“Ah, _home_.” Tiseis shifts in their chair, their face frozen with hesitation. “I’m afraid that’s not possible, my Lord.”

“Why not? Am I a prisoner after all?” They sure haven’t acted like it, but maybe now that push comes to shove it’ll turn out that yes, he’s not allowed to leave after all.

“Not quite,” Tiseis says. There’s an awful pause. It feels pressing and tense. Then, “It’s because my Lord had a heart attack on the night of his twenty-first birthday.”

“ _What_?” Harry asks meekly, not comprehending.

“My Lord died,” Tiseis says.

They say more but Harry doesn’t hear anything beyond the ringing in his ears.

He _died_.

*

But Harry is twenty-one and not ready for death yet. 

He doesn’t want to be dead, he wants to be alive and celebrate life with his friends. He wants to wake up at arse-o’clock in the mornings and grumble while standing in line for a coffee on his way to work. He wants to get home bone-tired but satisfied at a job well done, wants to have a beer with Ron and Hermione, maybe talk Quidditch with Ginny, spend some time in the woods with Luna and Neville. 

He wants to live, but.

*

This is it then, isn’t it? _This_ is his life now.

He died, there’s no going back. 

And here he was worried about getting _fired_ , of all things.

*

_Five Years Ago_

They wake up with sand clinging to their unfamiliar body, their eyes locked onto a bright blue sky. They move their limbs experimentally; they have arms and legs and hands and feet, they can tell that much. They sit up and notice they are thin and grey-skinned and a hand ran over their head reveals they are bald. They look around, but around them is nothing but arid land, a lonely tree caught in a state of half-decay not far away.

Then they get up on their feet, their legs still shaky. They’re dressed in long black flowy garments but despite the hot sun, they find they aren’t overheating. The robes are too long and they almost stumble over them but they manage to regain their footing just in time.

They start walking.

*

They walk for a very long time, but the sun doesn’t move in the sky. They feel that it should, but they can’t tell why or how they know this. Their mouth is dry and their bare feet burn in the hot sand but they carry on regardless.

*

They are angry and hungry and thirsty but most of all they are confused.

*

Above them, the sky turns dark and the sun loses its brightness, changes seamlessly into a moon as if it had been that way all along. The temperature turns cold. They are lost. Any sense of direction is long since gone, but they walk anyway, and then, finally, there is a spark of joy—a well in the middle of nowhere.

They hobble over to it and peer inside and see that it’s filled with water. They reach into it and cup the liquid in their shaking hands, but when they drink the fresh water, it doesn’t sate their thirst.

They continue walking.

*

A hut in the far distance, light coming from the windows, a sense of relief washing over them as strong as the anger and despair coursing through them, the hunger constantly gnawing at their insides. How they make it toward the hut they don’t know, but they fall to their knees on the sandy bricks in front of the door.

The door opens and a dementor stands in front of them. They too look old and tired, but the dementor comes across the doorstep to kneel next to them, a skeletal hand heavy on their shoulder, and they sag further. “Help me,” they croak.

The dementor clacks their tongue and helps them up. “Come, then,” they say, grunting under the weight of them. The stranger sets them in front of a burning fire and shivers run down their spine at the sudden change in temperature. “Here, this will help you get through the worst of it,” the dementor says, holding out a cup of some liquid. “You’re hungry, javaan?”

“Yes,” they say, curling up further and closing their eyes. “Very hungry, mahoday.”[?] Their entire being hurts with it. “Need—I don’t know what I need.” They’re so sleepy, they could fall asleep right there and then if the other dementor would let them.

But the other dementor doesn’t let them. “Well, first things first, do you have a name?” they ask, sitting down on the other side of the fire. “My name is Niwuce, I live here sometimes.”

Sometimes. They tilt their head curiously, opening their eyes slowly. “Name,” they say in their low rumbling voice, “no, I have no name.” They feel like they used to have a name, but it’s gone now. They must’ve forgot at some point in the past. They wonder if there’s anyone around who remembers them, if they left someone behind. After all, in order to appear somewhere, they must have disappeared from somewhere else.

“How about Muthudos?” the dementor says, oblivious to their thoughts.

“Muthudos,” they repeat.

“Yes, you are now Muthudos,” Niwuce decides.

“I am Muthudos.” The name feels odd in their mouth but right enough, they suppose.

The other dementor grins, blue lips stretched thin. “Yes, you are.” They clear their throat then get to their feet and walk over to a table in the corner. There’s a box there, and when Niwuce opens it, Muthudos spots rows upon rows of phials, all bright red. The older dementor takes one of them then sits down next to Muthudos. “Here, have some aatma ka ras,”[?] Niwuce says kindly, holding out the red phial. “It’ll help with the hunger, I promise. Just a sip should be enough.”

Muthudos frowns at it, but they’re exhausted and they’re hungry and they don’t know what to do about either problem. If this aatma ka ras, whatever that is, helps then why shouldn’t they give it a shot? With a trembling hand they take the phial, red liquid swirling inside of it. It doesn’t look like soul juice, it looks like blood. They feel they should protest more, because this seems almost too easy. “And you’re _sure_ this will help?” they ask skeptically. “Sir.”

“Yes,” Niwuce says vehemently. “These are mild. You can have the phial, just take a sip when you feel like you need it.”

Muthudos nods and brings the phial to their lips, tasting it, smacking their lips at the copper tang and making a face; it doesn’t just look like blood, it _is_ blood. Their mouth tingles pleasantly before it starts to burn slightly, their throat following, and they bend over and cough until their insides hurt with the strain of it. But even as it starts to hurt, there’s a low simmering satisfaction under their papery skin, warmth filling the void in the depth of their being.

Muthudos sighs and sags in their chair, stoppering the phial and lowering it onto the table. “Oh, that’s strong,” is all they manage before there’s utter bliss taking their breath away, running from their toes to the tips of their fingers, making their scalp tingle.

They pass out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations and my meanings:
> 
> Maut ke sevak = death's servants (my meaning: dementors)  
> Mrutyu ka Swami = master of death (singular, mrutyu ke swami is plural)  
> Jonks = leeches, bloodsuckers (my meaning: derogatory term for vampires)  
> Pishaachs = vampires  
> Mantri = minister (my meaning: region manager)  
> Kiledar = keeper of the castle  
> Upamantri = deputy minister (my meaning: mayor)  
> Mahoday = sir, used when you don't know someone's gender  
> Aatma ka ras = juice of the soul  
>   
> "Jalao idhar." = burn here  
> 


	4. Chapter 4

Kila Adholok has a throne room.

Harry knows this because he’s currently seated on said throne, one elbow propped up on the armrest, his chin in his hand as he listens with half an ear to whatever the vampire in front of him is saying. She’s tall and beautiful, dressed in ornate robes, and Harry knows he should be paying attention, but by god, it’s so mind numbing. She’s been going on and on and on about the delay of her shipment caused by mandatory searches, and yes, Harry understands that it’s a pain, but honestly, this is taking it too far.

“—half a mind to take my business elsewhere,” she concludes her speech.

Harry gives her a long look, tempted to say nothing at all. “Feel free,” he says.

She gets angry at that. “Well, I’ve never—”

“My Lady Vampire Felicity of clan Silver Lake,” Harry interrupts her solemnly, trying to leave any mockery out of his tone though it’s hard, “your caravan is not the only one that is searched for contraband. We have _laws_. If nobody listened to the laws, we’d have anarchy, and we don’t _want_ anarchy.” Because anarchy would mean she’d no longer be able to enjoy her power as a clan leader, and she seems the type who likes the power she has over other people if the way she snaps her fingers at her lackeys is any indication.

“I’m merely saying it implies a certain lack of trust, my Lord,” Felicity sneers.

“It does not,” Harry says patiently, though he’s already bored of this conversation, and has been bored of it for the past fifteen minutes because they’re just running around in circles, everything already said that they’re able to say about it.

Dzal steps forward, acting as senior advisor while Siplec is visiting the city of Soleil on urgent business, and they bend over to whisper in Harry’s ear, “Stay firm, my Lord.”

“I’m trying,” he whispers back. 

“You are doing great so far,” Dzal says kindly, finally listening to Harry’s request to stop it with the third person address. Siplec has been a tougher nut to crack.

Harry nods at the encouragement then turns his attention back to Felicity, and Dzal steps back to their former spot. “Your protests have been heard and they’ve been dismissed. Your caravans will be searched and that’s the end of it,” he says, enunciating clearly, his voice echoing lightly through the throne room. “If my Lady Vampire wishes to lodge a formal complaint, well, we have the correct paperwork for that.”

Felicity’s lips thin further, but then she bows. “Very well, my Lord.”

Harry doubts she’ll accept it, but this is the most he can do. 

He withholds a sigh but it’s close. 

*

It has been an entire month since Harry joined the dementors at Kila Adholok. Time has gone by very fast, and it’s been a surprise at how easy it has been to get used to his new living—or undead—conditions. His mornings are spent learning about the vast history of the dementors, and boy is his head full of previous samraats now. His afternoons are full of meetings with (self-)important vampire lords and ladies and _paperwork_ , and who knew that being the Master of Death would be so much work?

Some of the vampires, like Felicity, are grumbling about the mandatory searches, but the thing is, there are laws about the type of items that are allowed inside Paralok. It’s not a free-for-all by any means. 

The amount of paperwork is insane, thank god for Siplec and Meglis.

Paralok has several regions, though they call them districts, and each one has a mantri ruling that district. Siplec is one of these mantris, the one charged with ruling the lands closest to Kila Adholok on either side. Under the mantris in the hierarchy fall the upamantris, or the mayors of the cities, and the kiledar of Kila Adholok, Tiseis. Harry learned all this at the beginning, but he’s only recently been able to fully understand that, what it means they do.

Meglis used to assist Tiseis in maintaining Kila Adholok but they moved to the city of Asnard more than two centuries ago, having waited for a hundred years but with nothing left to do at Kila Adholok without a new samraat to serve. Meglis doesn’t come across as ancient the way Dzal, Siplec and Tiseis do, but neither are they as young and free-spirited as Zallah; they’ve clearly been around for a while. They’re a godsend, taking care of most of the paperwork involved so Harry doesn’t have to.

Meglis doesn’t have an advising rank, however, but Dzal has been more than happy to take up that mantle again, guiding Harry expertly through these early days and helping him recover from a faux-pas here and there. Siplec is mostly gone, meeting up with other mantris of the districts and the upamantris of the cities though when Harry asks, they claim Harry shouldn’t concern himself with these matters yet and to focus on the influx of undead instead, which means he’s left with land disputes and held up caravans. 

*

Harry flees the throne room as soon as he’s able to, hiding in the alcove next to his quarters. The pillows on the stone bench are clean and whole again, threaded with gold, a luxury gift from a vampire lord seeking his favour. Harry had no idea vampires were highly materialistic, but here he is, sitting down amid throw pillows that could’ve easily cost hundreds of pounds with the amount of threaded gold that’s in there. He grabs the book he’s still struggling with, a history of his predecessor.

Xekigri had been his age when she became samraat, because all of them died as soon as they hit twenty-one or simply on the first birthday after a new samraat was needed, leaving small gaps between samraats. She had a hard existence from the little Harry was able to learn about her human life; very little has been written about it. He wants to learn why she disliked vampires so much that she would close the gates, but there’s nothing in the book so far, and nobody he’s asked so far has a clear answer for him. Some clearly regard the choice as a mistake, others are more neutral about it, but he has yet to meet a dementor completely in favour of the closing of the portal. The closest to an answer he has got so far is something Dzal had told him before quickly moving on to different topics, “It was just a band-aid.”

But to what purpose?

Tiseis finds him soon enough, because of course they do. “May I, my Lord?” they ask politely, gesturing at the other side of the bench.

Harry nods and closes the book again, puts it on a pillow to his left. “Something wrong?”

“No, my Lord, I was merely wondering if my—” Tiseis clears their throat. They’ve agreed to drop the many my Lord’s and stop the third person address just like Dzal, but they keep slipping up and then correcting themselves. “I was merely wondering if you would enjoy a trip into Paralok.”

Harry’s eyes light up. “A trip?” He hasn’t had time to check out Paralok at all, hasn’t had time to check out many things, if he’s honest, as if the dementors keep him busy on purpose. It might very well be true, as a way to keep him from thinking about his situation too much. It’s definitely working; when the sun goes down, he’s exhausted and falls asleep instantly.

“Yes, my Lord. I wish to check up on my land, it’s in Eguiji.”

The border of the Eguji district is a little over an hour away on a thestral at their top speed. The district doesn’t have a city that Harry knows of, but he’s seen the map, and there are a few villages at least, with a larger thestral farm being set up by one of the more prominent vampire clans. “Will we be going to a village?” That would be interesting, though he has yet to see the village in Adholok ka Van.

“Not today, my Lord.”

Perhaps that’s just as well, because it would only be fair to visit the one in the forest of Adholok first, considering it’s right outside.

“Would my—you be interested in joining me?” Tiseis asks. “We will be taking thestrals, of course.”

Thestrals! Harry hasn’t seen those yet, though he knows they were gifted five of them when the portal had just opened. “I’ve not been on a thestral in years,” Harry says, highly enthused by this. “Let’s _go_!”

*

Tiseis insists on sending Siplec a raven before they leave, considering they’re within the district somewhere. If they’d been in another district or in the city, they’d have sent one of the vultures, which Harry keeps well away from. He’s seen some of the dementors handle those, and they have a mean look about them, utterly viscous. 

They descend the grand staircase downstairs, and then go through a narrow side door down more stairs, walking through the underground tunnels, a bit of a shortcut. The path is illuminated by torches the flare to life when they approach, a piece of leftover magic from one of the previous samraats.

Harry is still trying to figure out his own magic, how it has changed, what he can do now and more importantly what he can’t, but with how busy things have been, for this too there has barely been enough time. He’s just too tired at the end of a day to do anything more than collapse straight into bed.

This trip is going to be the first real break he’ll have.

Soon they’re at the stables. It’s not where the thestrals are being kept, those freely roam the forest around the castle, but for long sits dementors prefer to use special saddles. Stable staff, those taking care of the dark skeletal horses and the thestrals, have already dusted off said saddles in preparation for travel.

“Can’t you just glide?” Harry asks.

Tiseis looks at him, handing one of the saddles to Harry to carry. “We could, my Lord, but you don’t yet know how to and—” 

“Wait, I can _fly_?” Harry interrupts.

“It won’t be easy to learn, but yes, he could learn if he so wanted to. However, even if he did, we are much slower than thestrals, my Lord. If we didn’t have these, we would have been using the undead horses instead. They don’t fly but they’re still faster than us dementors.”

“I want to learn how to fly,” Harry says stubbornly. He pauses. “When we come back, I mean. Thestrals are fine for now, I suppose.”

Tiseis looks amused. “Indeed, my Lord.”

They exit the storage rooms, as that’s where Harry realises they are, and go back up a different set of stairs near the back. They end up on the courtyard near the arched opening at the front of the castle leading outside, its gates wide open now that they have actual traffic, though it’s quiet at this time of the day. There’s very little sunlight in the castle except at the front where Harry’s rooms happen to be. It’s ideal for the vampires staying with them while they wait for their cargo to be checked by the chagrined young dementors. Dzal claims it’s good for them, that it teaches the javaans some patience. 

Dzal, despite their considerable age, is full of shit.

Tiseis leaves him at the gates with their saddles, hunting down two thestrals. Harry adjusts his robes, happy enough that he has a belt now even though it makes him look more like a dementor than anything else could’ve done. He doesn’t want to check a mirror and see what he looks like with his hood up, though part of him is curious. He just… still isn’t comfortable with the dementors he used to know, the ones they still are as soon as their hoods go up, undead monstrosities. Harry likes to live in denial like that, though he knows it’s going to come back to bite him soon enough.

The way Harry understands Paralok, or the Beyond as the dementors translate it to when they speak in English, is that it’s a realm for the undead, between life as Harry knew it, Adholok, and the afterlife, which is closed off from them. Paralok is walled off by an enormous structure called Maut ka Diwar, the Wall of Death, which is what Harry ran into when he first entered Paralok after dying—still can’t get over that. It was as he first suspected, the wall at the end of the brick road leading to Kila Adholok if only he’d walked through it. Now that the portal is open, it should be looking like an actual gate, with the portal at the end, that people can pass through.

Harry’s excited to see Paralok again, if only because it’s been a month since he got here and he’s heard so much about how it _used_ to be, when the forests near the gates had been thick and green and beautiful, the ground sloping down into a valley of grassland, rich plains as far as the eye can see.

*

But Paralok is a light sandy brown as far as the eye can see.

It’s just as Harry remembers it. There’s sand everywhere, though not as bad as in a desert, Harry would guess. He’s never actually _been_ anywhere like that before, but in the films deserts don’t look much like this. From what he’s been told, the landscape is supposed to be green and lush and beautiful, but all he can see is death and decay, from the trees to the shrubbery to the weeds between the bricks, everything rotted to the core except for a small patch of grass near the gates, so out of place it takes Harry’s breath away.

“Is it coming back?” Harry asks quietly.

“Is what coming back, my Lord?” Then Tiseis sees where Harry is staring at, and their expression grows hopeful. “Oh, isn’t it beautiful? Yes, my Lord, life is slowly coming back into our world. It leaks out from the portal, seeps into our lands. When it was closed, this… flow of life, if you would, was cut off and everything went back to how it used to be.”

“This,” Harry says, looking around him once more.

“Yes, my Lord, this.”

Above them the sun shines brightly in its permanent spot in the sky. “How can you tell the direction if the sun doesn’t move?” Harry asks.

“You can’t,” Tiseis says easily. “We have city compasses. Their needles are tied to large stones buried in the heart of each city. As we won’t be going to a city, I didn’t bring one with me.” They pull on the reins of their moving thestral and it protests but then stills again. “I do, however, have my personal compass with me.” They hold up a strip of leather with several large beads attached to it, tapping the third bead with a long fingernail. “This is the one for my land, my Lord.” They tap the second one. “This one is tied to the gates.”

“Ah.” Harry watches the dementor secure the strip around their wrist, then looks at the onyx buried in the sand in front of the gates. “That’s the stone for the compasses, isn’t it?”

“Yes, my Lord. Would my L— _you,_ I apologise, my Lord. Would you like to see the landscape as we fly, or should we go for speed?”

“It’s all like this, isn’t it?” Harry asks, gesturing around him.

“It will be for quite some time, yes.”

“Then speed is fine,” Harry decides. “How long will it take to get there? Does time flow the same here as it does in Adholok?”

“It does indeed, my Lord.”

*

They take to the skies, though they have to stop after less than a minute because Harry’s freezing at the height they’re flying and his magic works so differently that he’s bound to set himself on fire should he try a warming charm. Tiseis puts something similar on his robes with the murmur of, “Isse garmaana.”[?] Instantly his robes heat up, and Harry soon stops shivering, teeth no longer clattering with the cold. The only problem left is his hands, so Tiseis—despite Harry’s protests—hurries back to Kila Adholok to find him a set of gloves. 

When they come back, the gloves they’re holding are clearly traded for with one of the vampires. They’re made of thick leather, with a diamond clasp at the top. “How much did this cost us?” Harry asks with a bit of a sour expression. He’s aware that the vampires have them at a disadvantage at the moment, and no doubt something simple as a pair of gloves, diamond clasp or not, cost them more than it should have.

“Nothing we couldn’t afford, my Lord,” Tiseis says smoothly.

So an arm and a leg, basically. 

*

Harry forgets about all his worries once they’re soaring through the sky on the pair of thestrals. It’s a long ride, but Harry loves it, and it just drives home the fact that he hasn’t flown in months now, had been so busy with work that he simply hadn’t had the time or the energy for it. Now that he’s back in the skies, however, he can’t imagine being anywhere else. Nothing else matters but the wind in his hair and the vast sky ahead of him.

After what feels like too short a time, Tiseis slows down suddenly and starts descending. Harry initially shoots past them and has to circle back, but then he too starts a descent. They glide through the darkening sky for a moment longer, passing large dead trees and a dry river bed. In the distance Harry thinks he can see a village at the foot of a mountain but it’s too far away to make out properly. They go down further and further until they pass the forest, entering the plains. 

They come to a stop in the middle of one of the large fields separated by what look to be irrigation canals and fences. There’s a single tiled path along the fences, rough pebbled stones leading the way. How Tiseis knows which one is theirs, Harry has no clue, but he follows them around anyway. The thestrals’ hooves click-clack-click on the stones, and then suddenly Tiseis pulls on the reigns and they come to a halt.

“This is mine,” Tiseis says as they get off their thestral.

Harry stays seated a moment longer, looking around. “How do you know?” There aren’t any specific landmarks that he can spot to differentiate between one field and the next. They all seem pretty much the same, its grass brown and all the unrecognisable plants withered. Tiseis is already walking away after tying the thestral to the fence, so Harry dismounts and does the same before hurrying after the dementor. “Or is it the compass?”

“It’s the compass, my Lord,” Tiseis says, carefully walking around a row of dead plants before kneeling down on the other side of it, their hands in the dry soil. “I used to grow vegetables here, when times were good. Vegetables and sunflowers, in fact. They did very well in the climate. The sunflowers were the first to go, I already cleared those out.”

Vegetables and _sunflowers_ , Harry thinks faintly, and then he thinks he should really stop being surprised by all the weird things the dementors get up to.

“This plot of land has been mine for many centuries now, but there is very little paperwork to prove that it’s mine. This goes for many of these lands. We have to make sure it’s not been stolen by travellers. They take our lands and settle there just long enough to make it theirs, and there’s no way to prove otherwise. Harvests weren’t as important when there were no outsiders to trade with, but now that the portal has reopened, things will change once more.”

“So it’s not been taken now?”

“I will need to check from the air to make sure, but no, I don’t think my land has been taken just yet. No doubt they will wait until life has reached this far. I used to check up on them once a month. The soil here is good and it’s relatively close to Kila Adholok, it makes Eguji a very popular district, I’m afraid. The same goes for the district of Tural.”

“Districts are the provinces, right?”

“Yes, my Lord,” Tiseis says distractedly, pulling two plants out of the soil at once and throwing them to the side. “I will have to come back another time to clear this out,” they murmur, looking around them.

“I can help?” Harry offers.

Tiseis shakes their head. “No need, my Lord. I enjoy the work, but it’s getting dark, we should be heading back soon, if my Lord wishes to get up early for Dzal’s morning classes,” they grin. “If their classes are too early, you could always visit vizar ji Yiori in Eguji. They tend to do their classes in the afternoon rather than straight at dawn. I think it would be good for my Lord to meet some of the others. Dzal is very particular, you will find. I say that with utmost fondness, of course.”

“Of course,” Harry repeats dryly.

*

Tiseis offers to take them on a scenic tour on the way back, to which Harry eagerly agrees, curious despite his sudden weariness. Technically he could sleep in the saddle without falling off, and he’s seriously contemplating taking a nap once the tour is finished, but then Tiseis leads them toward the mountain range and it seems almost endless when they get close enough, reaching back for kilometres.

They’re avoiding the mountains, however, circling back before they have to fly between the peaks, but Harry can see what’s down there clearly enough; a sea of light, the glow of the city of Aradar at night, entire buildings carved out of the mountain. He’s seen drawings, but he bets it looks even better in person. He wishes he wasn’t so sleepy, or he’d have demanded they go check it out, because he wants to see what their civilisation is like, but they don’t have time for that now, not if they want to return at a reasonable time.

As they fly back at a sedate pace they go low over the hills between the mountain range of Aradar and the forest outside of the district of Adholok. It’s a little confusing that the district closest to Kila Adholok shares the same name, though it makes sense.

Harry wishes they flew even slower so he could hear the stories Tiseis no doubt has to tell him about the city of Aradar, and perhaps even about the other cities that Harry so far has only heard and seen drawings of. The Festival of the Strong starts on Halloween, and he’s already let hints drop that he wishes to celebrate it in one of the cities, though he doesn't really care which one. Harry had suggested Aradar at first, but Siplec had been very firm in their _no_ , said it was a bad idea. They were unwilling to expand on why that is the case, said that Harry had other things to worry about and then promptly distracted him with a history lesson on vampire trades.

He longs to tell Hermione and Ron all he’s learned so far but whenever he sends them a raven, the raven keeps circling the castle for a day or two and then it comes back to the keep to deliver their unopened letter. He doesn’t think showing up in person is going to be an option either, not with the changes he’s spotted in the mirror the few times he dared to look. They’re very minor, but they’re enough to be noticeable.

Besides, they believe him to be dead.

Someone, most likely Ron, would have checked up on him in the morning after he didn’t appear at work, which is unlike him, and they’d have found him in his bed, passed away peacefully in his sleep. It’d have been sudden and they’d be confused, he didn’t have any heart conditions, how did this happen? Was it stress? No, it couldn’t have been stress, Harry would have said something. They might think it was foul play, and there might even be the whisper of suicide, but that voice would be stamped down soon enough, because Harry would _never_. He can’t imagine the amount of confused hurt he put them through and he wishes he could make it better, but at this point he doesn’t think he can.

Tiseis directs them toward the wall, and they fly over a lit up village and what looks to be a temple, and then they’re at the wall, which seems to reach endlessly into the sky, and then they’re descending again and landing on familiar ground. Just in time too, because the warming charm Tiseis put on Harry’s robes is about over and done with, and he’s starting to shiver again, his hands gone cold already. At least his boots are warm.

The onyx stone below the gates flashes blue for a second, and Tiseis sighs and steps back from the road, gesturing at Harry to do the same. Seconds later two undead horses pulling a wagon come through, the first of a large caravan. Harry recognises the emblem on the banner they’re riding under; that’s Felicity’s caravan coming through the portal.

Felicity comes through somewhere in the middle, on foot, walking over to them as soon as she spots them standing to the side. “Well, well, well,” she begins, coming to stand next to the wing of Harry’s thestral. Without asking, she reaches out a pale hand and touches the wing, stroking it lightly. “Beautiful,” she murmurs.

“Kindly refrain,” Tiseis speaks up.

Felicity rolls her eyes but takes a step back anyway. “Nice gloves, my Lord,” she says next with a coy smile curling her red lips upward.

Harry narrows his eyes at her, then realises what must have happened, and he can’t help the grimace on his face. “I think so too, thank you,” he says, making sure to speak carefully. Next to him, Tiseis looks slightly pained at the exchange, which, _good_ , serves them right for letting them through without a search. “And where are you headed, my Lady?”

“Oh, here and there, my Lord,” Felicity answers, and she pushes her long blonde braid back over her shoulder. If she wasn’t such a bitch, she’d be beautiful, honestly, but her attitude leaves Harry’s blood running cold. She winks at him. “You know, a traveller’s life.”

Next to him, Tiseis inhales sharply and they straighten up to their full height. “My Lady!” they burst out angrily. “That is uncalled for!”

Felicity’s eyes flicker over to the dementor. “Oh, would you relax, I’m _joking_.”

“That’s not a joking matter!” Tiseis snaps.

“Oh, but isn’t it just?” Felicity giggles behind a hand, her entire manner overdone. “Or maybe I’m not joking? I guess you’ll never know now.”

“I will know when your next shipment comes in,” Tiseis promises fiercely, their skeletal hands clenched into fists. “We will see then.”

“Of course we will, my dear Tiseis. Oh, but you haven’t changed, have you?” The vampire lady blows them a kiss. “Until next time, my Lord, Tiseis.” Then she mounts her undead horse and clacks her tongue and they’re off, leaving Harry confused as to what the hell just happened between the two.

“What was that about?” Harry asks, a little pointedly.

Tiseis attempts to get their expression to do something peaceful rather than murderous, and they tilt their head this way and that until finally it starts to work. “My Lady Vampire Felicity has a very dark sense of humour is all, my Lord,” they spit out with venom in their voice. “I have known her for a long time.”

Sure, okay, a dark sense of humour, _that_ was obviously the problem between them.

One of these days Harry is going to have to sit down his advisors and they’re going to have a talk about all the stuff they’re hiding from him, but today is not that day, because Harry is tired after a day full of classes and whinging vampires and then sitting on a thestral for nearly five hours in the freezing cold.

So he lets it go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Isse garmaana = warm up here. Polite version, Tiseis uses this when in Harry’s presence. The less polite version would be "isse garmao", which is what Tiseis would use in the presence of other dementors but not those of his rank or above him in rank.


End file.
